Requiem for a Chickenhawk

De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est.

The passing of Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina demands that we transmute this worn Latin aphorism so beloved of English classicists into its opposite: De mortuis nihil boni dicendum est.

Most of the postmortems about Graham’s life and legacy have focused on his supposed U-turn from Trump critic to Trump bootlicker. Particularly fatuous neocons such as the unavoidable Anne Applebaum (the long-suffering wife of warmongering Polish Deputy Prime Minister Radek Sikorski) have repeatedly excoriated Graham for not keeping with the Neocon Never-Trump Faith.

Whether Applebaum knows it or not, in truth, Graham was worth his weight in gold to the neocon cause, to the war hawks against Russia and Iran, and to the all-too-powerful, shadowy NATO power nexus. For Graham strengthened Trump’s most reckless and irresponsible instincts on both the Middle East and Eastern Europe, overriding all the President’s more constructive and cautious, conflicting ambitions and goals.

Graham’s supposed transformation into the Apostle of Trump on his personal road to Damascus should have come as no surprise, for it was completely consistent with his entire career of living out one lie after another. As Mary McCarthy once said of Lillian Hellman, every word Graham ever uttered was a lie, including “and” and “the.” Indeed, everything about Graham was a lie - just as are all the sickly sweet, sentimentalized tears now pouring forth at his passing.

Graham, a neocon to the core, was proud of the ferocious anti-Muslim, pro-Israel, anti-Russian, and supposedly pro-Ukrainian policies he championed with such relentless and consistent single-minded passion for so long. It is therefore all too easy to forget the immense human suffering those policies have caused.

Graham boasted of being an enemy of Russia. It is certain he never lost a moment’s sleep over the roughly 325,000 Russian war dead (plus another 1 million to 1.2 million casualties) that the Russia-Ukraine War he has backed so relentlessly for so long has brought about.

Yet it was the Ukrainian people whom he claimed to “love” and support so selflessly that were the greatest victims of his fraudulent “compassion.” At least two million young Ukrainian men and boys have lost their lives, their families ruined and scarred forever because of Graham’s commitment to the principle of their “resistance” to Russia.

Similarly, the estimated 75,000 civilian Palestinian dead in Gaza over the past two years never caused him a moment’s concern either, nor did the 1,000 or so Israeli army combat dead that have resulted from that unending, miserable, pointless war. For Lindsey Graham backed Netanyahu and his narrow religious-nationalist extremist government as over the past four years it systematically destroyed Israel’s democracy. On the contrary, he did nothing to protect the religious and political rights even of secular and moderate religious Jews in Israel, let alone the rights of Muslims. Graham protected Netanyahu. He empowered him. There is no evidence he ever expressed a word of concern, let alone disapproval, for Netanyahu’s rampant destruction of every remaining legal and constitutional protection of human rights even in his own country.

But then, Graham was not an intelligent, wise, or well-read man. And anyway, such qualities would be fatal to any successful 21st-century United States Senator. Nor, of course, was Graham ever the courageous, fearless, principled champion of global democracy, decency, and freedom he claimed to be, and no doubt always remained convinced that he was. Once again, the opposite was the truth.

Most of all, of course, Graham was a liar and a fraud: In the 23 years he served so shamefully in the United States Senate, he first backed President George W. Bush’s witless GWOT - the infamous Global War on Terror. He blessed, approved, and drove forward every costly, futile, wasted, incompetent commitment of blood and treasure in the endless sinkholes of Iraq and Afghanistan.

After Bush Junior made his fateful June 15, 2001, declaration in Warsaw that a top strategic priority for the United States was to bring the three Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia (with a combined population less than one third that of Los Angeles) into the NATO alliance, Graham became their “principled” defender through thick and thin.

He won reelection in conservative South Carolina again and again thanks to his pandering to the Christian far right through his championing of “family values” that he never practiced himself, and his contempt for gay rights, especially the legalization of same sex marriage. In fact, it has long been a rather open secret around Washington that he was gay himself, though he was a very prominent member of the Corinth Baptist Church in Seneca, South Carolina.

Graham also followed the classic chickenhawk career path of clothing himself in the uniform of his country without ever exposing himself to the slightest danger. He was a lawyer, so he served in the United States Air Force JAG Corps. Paper promotions and decorations attached to him like flies on a piece of rotting meat. He ended up as a reserve colonel, and he was awarded a Bronze Star medal and a Meritorious Service Medal—all as well-earned as Monopoly board money.

Graham appears to have died a far better death than he deserved. If we believe the official story - which so far I do - he had a sudden heart attack at his Washington, DC, home on the evening of July 11, only very shortly after returning from his most recent visit to Ukraine. Characteristically, the last public report of him showed him enthusiastically visiting a drone production factory, happy at the sight of more weapons to kill more Russians.

On July 12, preliminary findings from the Washington, D.C., medical examiner stated that Graham died from an aortic dissection caused by arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.

This appears entirely credible. If you are 70 years old and still insist on jetting around the world as the self-important, hyperactive Graham always insisted on doing - and if you are always determined to fan the flames of needless and appalling conflict likely to escalate into world war - such an ending is almost inevitable.